Although both focuses are war films, they do actually have have a reasonable amount of factors that distinguish them from each other. The most obvious perhaps being the fact they are both set in different times in different wars.
One thing I’ve heard about The Hurt Locker is that troops who have returned from the middle-east have said they found it “unrealistic”. However in contrast, war veterans who viewed Saving Private Ryan [SPR] acclaimed it for its realism. I wonder if this is due to more truth being portrayed in SPR. It’s only recently that stories never heard before from the Second World War are now being spread. For example there are scenes in SPR where American soldiers shoot surrendering Germans, which is a war crime. Stories like this have only recently been shared by veterans etc but would not have been closer to the time of the War.
However with the ongoing Iraq war, there are most likely atrocities being committed by our troops. The Hurt Locker would not have access to accounts that may reveal our crimes as the government won’t want people to speak against our military action in the middle-east. In fact I’d go as far to say that The Hurt Locker is a form of propaganda as it does not question the justification of United States and British occupation of the middle-east, which is a clear difference between the two films. See you could argue SPR is propaganda too due to it’s high amount of American patriotism.
One clear similarity is that both films have a character introduced early who we assume to be the protagonist or leading actor. But later we discover that we have been misled. I feel the use of this in The Hurt Locker is to give us an early warning that this film is going to be both tense and unpredictable, it basically hooks the audience in wanting to see more.
jamzillawilliams 